{"id":18699,"date":"2019-06-28T10:51:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T18:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=18699"},"modified":"2024-04-10T12:31:43","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T19:31:43","slug":"women-of-the-space-agency-once-forbidden-no-longer-hidden","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/women-of-the-space-agency-once-forbidden-no-longer-hidden\/","title":{"rendered":"Women of the Space Agency: Once Forbidden, No Longer Hidden"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Heather Archuletta<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

In July of 1999, on Apollo 11\u2019s <\/span>30<\/span>th<\/span> anniversary<\/span><\/a>, at a Kennedy Space Center press conference, NASA astronaut and first moonwalker Neil Armstrong lamented, \u201cSchool children used to say, ‘We are reading about you in science class.’ Now they say, ‘We are reading about you in history class.’\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The shift was not lost on any Apollo astronauts, who were the height of space-race heroism, but now walk freely through public places unrecognized, despite contributing far more to humanity\u2019s knowledge than the average musician or actor more likely to cause chaos upon being spotted. <\/span>Why<\/span><\/i>, I groused to friends, <\/span>should entertainers get so much more attention than flight crews who risked their lives or spent their careers conducting important science?\u00a0<\/span><\/i>There wasn\u2019t even room for Selene, Greek Goddess of the Moon. Instead, the program was inexplicably named \u201cApollo\u201d after the Greek Sun God.<\/pullquote><\/span><\/p>\n

Further, astronauts are only the front-facing stars of missions that required the efforts of tens of thousands of workers who remain unknown, except by dedicated space enthusiasts combing NASA archives for stories and transcripts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The popular films <\/span>Hidden Figures<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>First Man<\/span><\/i> helped bring accolades to contributors of early missions, or in Armstrong\u2019s case, a story the subject was reluctant to capitalize upon during his lifetime. But for every story making it to the screen, thousands struggle to find a commensurate spotlight, even decades after their triumphs should have warranted familiarity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After years of attending space conferences, working and\/or attending events at ten NASA centers and meeting dozens of astronauts, flight directors, and mission controllers, I only ever personally met a single woman from the \u201cspace race\u201d days.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roberta Villavecchia<\/b>, or Robyn<\/strong>, as her friends called her, contributed as an engineer to Lunar Module (LM) engines, and performed hypergolic propellant calculations for two lunar missions that put Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Pete Conrad, and Alan Bean on the surface of our Moon. Today, a standard iPhone has about 35+ million times the computing power of the Apollo Command Service Module (CSM). Back then, NASA needed \u201chuman computers\u201d doing the bulk of the calculations on paper.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Working

Working on the Skylab sunscreen, from left to right: Dale Gentry, Elizabeth Gauldin, Alyene Baker, and James H. Barnett Jr.; image via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Much like <\/span>Alyene Baker<\/b>, the woman who would save Skylab with her sewing machine<\/span><\/a>, Robyn was another \u201chidden figure\u201d of the era. There was little room for women who had a love of aviation and exploration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t even room for Selene, Greek Goddess of the Moon. Instead, the program was inexplicably named \u201cApollo\u201d after the Greek Sun God. This odd irony goes largely unconsidered and certainly unchallenged.<\/p>\n

I asked Robyn,<\/span> didn\u2019t the men ever see your work and know that you would also be an amazing astronaut? <\/span><\/i>Her matter-of-fact dismissal has always stuck in my head: \u201cThat didn\u2019t matter. The men shut down women participating, and if you ask me, it was because the women performed so well.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew to what she referred, having read about the \u201c<\/span>Mercury 13<\/b><\/a>\u201d<\/span> women. A more accurate term for the women pilots were the FLATs, or \u201c<\/span>First Lady Astronaut Trainees<\/span><\/a>\u201d: female pilots who endured preparations for space travel in the early 1960s, guided by William Lovelace, the medical doctor who had also overseen the physical and psychological testing of NASA’s first seven astronauts for Project Mercury. <\/span><\/p>\n

Never mind that the data demonstrated the women performed <\/span>better <\/span><\/i>than the men did; NASA simply didn\u2019t want an official program for them. As astronaut John Glenn testified to Congress during a <\/span>House Space Committee hearing in 1962<\/span><\/a>: \u201cThat women are not in this field is a fact of our social order.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Upon being asked if things hadn\u2019t changed between Mercury and Apollo, Robyn laughed, as if that was unthinkable. Then I remembered. We grew up in different worlds. My own career in the tech industry and at the space agency only became possible because of women like Robyn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n